Here’s a really cool flash tool that you can use to create your own comic strips. Here’s my first try…and yes, it’s a joke, people. I love my time at the reference desk, and I love helping my patrons.
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Author: griffey
Jason Griffey is the Director of Strategic Initiatives at NISO, where he works to identify new areas of the information ecosystem where standards expertise is useful and needed. Prior to joining NISO in 2019, Jason ran his own technology consulting company for libraries, has been both an Affiliate at metaLAB and a Fellow and Affiliate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, and was an academic librarian in roles ranging from reference and instruction to Head of IT at the University of TN at Chattanooga.
Jason has written extensively on technology and libraries, including multiple books and a series of full-periodical issues on technology topics, most recently AI & Machine Learning in Libraries and Library Spaces and Smart Buildings: Technology, Metrics, and Iterative Design from 2018. His newest book, co-authored with Jeffery Pomerantz, will be published by MIT Press in 2024.
He has spoken internationally on topics such as artificial intelligence & machine learning, the future of technology and libraries, decentralization and the Blockchain, privacy, copyright, and intellectual property. A full list of his publications and presentations can be found on his CV.
He is one of eight winners of the Knight Foundation News Challenge for Libraries for the Measure the Future project (http://measurethefuture.net), an open hardware project designed to provide actionable use metrics for library spaces. He is also the creator and director of The LibraryBox Project (http://librarybox.us), an open source portable digital file distribution system.
Jason can be stalked obsessively online, and spends his free time with his daughter Eliza, reading, obsessing over gadgets, and preparing for the inevitable zombie uprising.
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EyeOS
I’ve already crowed about this application to a number of people, but the more I play with it the more impressed I am.
I have trouble describing it, but…think of it like a personal information support system. It’s a web based system that allows you to interact with your information wherever you are…and provides you with basic tools to do so: word processor, calculator, notepad, phone directory, calendar. These all exist as widgets inside the browser, and act just like local tools.
I’m terrifically impressed. The best thing? It’s not a host-only system…you download and you install. It only requires PHP to run…no database, nothing. It’s all flat files and XML and javascript and it took me maybe 3 minutes to get it running. This thing is brilliant. It’s also GPL. Hack away!
Wow! Huge news today from Yahoo and the Internet Archive, among others:
The Open Content Alliance, a project that Yahoo is backing with several other partners, plans to provide digital versions of books, academic papers, video and audio. Much of the material will consist of copyrighted material voluntarily submitted by publishers and authors, said David Mandelbrot, Yahoo’s vice president of search content.
So Yahoo et al are going the opt in route, rather than opt out, which was Google’s plan. There is a lot of support for the idea that Google’s plan is completely within the bounds of copyright law, screaming from the various interest groups notwithstanding. It’s very interesting to see Brewster sign up to work with Yahoo on this…I’m curious to see where it goes.
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Can’t take the sky from me…
Short review of the new Joss Whedon film Serenity:
It rocked my face right off. Seriously. I’m looking around for my face right now. Has anyone seen it?
Go see this movie right now so that Joss may make many more of these.
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The Disneyfication of us
I only realized a couple of days ago that I hadn’t added our copious Disney trip pics to the flickr account. I’m still adding them (we took an enormous amount of pics) but the ones that are there are cool. I like this pic of Bets and I at Epcot.
For the record, the hat was a necessity to keep from killing myself. I burned the first day I was there, and my face and neck had to have some shade. It’s not just that I’m rocking my new Tennessee-ness.
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Squid? Or Savior?
I’m sure that most people have seen by now that the first ever film of a live Giant Squid (Architeuthis) was captured by some Japanese researchers, and stills from the film have shown up at National Geographic.
But I think something more is going on.
Is it just a coincidence that the Squid reveals itself to us now, after all these millenia? Choosing now to come forward and appear before our cameras? I think not.
Behold! The truth!
These Giant Squid are the messengers of the One True Being: The Flying Spaghetti Monster. They are truly created in His image, and low he has given unto us their smaller brethren as tasty fried snacks. Truly He is a benevolent entity.
This also explains why we are to dress as pirates in worship: because it reminds us of the times when we were on the sea, and closer to the Messengers of the FSM (rAmen). Many pirates may have indeed been touched by their noodly appendages, and brought closer to the FSM in so doing. This also brings into the realm of Holy Scripture such works as Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, wherein a Holy Messenger attempts to convert Ned Land and the rest of the crew of the Nautilus.
I am in awe of the revelation of the grand designs of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. You should be too.
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TENN-Share, and thoughts
I spent last Thursday and Friday at the Nashville Public Libary attending a small conference made up of Tennessee Libraries called TENN-Share.
The venue was really quite nice…the Nashville Public Library is in a wonderful building. However, none of the technology worked as it should (basically all presentations were done without computer assistance) and when a major portion of the program is Federated Search, that’s an issue. Also, for a major metropolitan library to not have wi-fi? Whassupwidat? I had planned on live-blogging the sessions, but NO wi-fi left me in the technological dark ages.
There were a number of good sessions, especially the ability to see different vendor products and be able to ask questions about content and usage of those products. It was also a great opportunity to meet other Tennessee librarians and network a bit…something that I haven’t really had a chance to do yet here.
Due to the majority of Thursday being about federated searching, I learned a lot about a word that was unfamiliar to me. De-duplication. Possibly this is because I haven’t done sufficient real database work, but I had never encountered the word before. I’d used the classic deselect, a grand old library term for remove from the collection. Patrons tend to be less excited about that when you use a word they don’t understand.
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Me and Mom
Ok…this is just wrong. Hurricane Rita is now a Catagory 5, and may strengthen further.
Two Cat 5’s in the Gulf within a month of each other? AND we’re about to run out of hurricane names…all we have left this year are Stan, Tammy, Vince, and Wilma. If that happens it would be the most active hurricane season in recorded history.
But global warming…nah, not a big deal, right Mr. President? I suppose the Salon article is right…if you can’t even admit that evolution is a fact, how can you possibly be asked to understand Global Warming?
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Testing
I just moved my blog and site from ibiblio over to LISHost (Thanks Blake!) and am curious to see if everything is still functional.
If someone wanders by, could you leave a comment? Or if you can’t, let me know.
EDIT: As far as I can tell, everything seems like it’s working wonderfully. I’ve set up forwarding via .htaccess on the old www.ibiblio.org/griffey/wp address, so you’ll still get forward if you have links to it. But if you can, swap anything over to the new official www.jasongriffey.net address. But the .htaccess should keep anything from breaking severely.